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This is my third draft today. I wanted to write a list of sassy girlboss quotes because I feel like I could take over the World today, but then I realised we all have Pinterest for that. So here’s an old post I hand wrote on the train to Plym a couple months ago, accompanied by a McDonald’s and sat next to a man reading his bible.

This January, I started a new job and with it, the realisation that I’m on countdown to being a full-time working gal for two whole years. The notion of this both makes me sound like a legit adult, whilst simultaneously want to run back under my duvet to hide and pretend that life doesn’t exist.

My legit full-time job count has hit a grand total of 3. A number that’s probably pretty scary for one of those frumpy careers advisors who tell you that a job is for life. Mine didn’t even understand the concept of working in fashion or that a ‘Fashion Buyer’ didn’t just mean I wanted to go shopping full time, so there’s that.

The rollercoaster of jobs have provided me with my fair share of tears and lols, so here’s a list of my ‘learns’ for all of you in this ‘not sure what I’m doing with my life’ shaped boat:

You will believe you can take over the world on a daily / weekly basis.
Know something your manager didn’t? Finish everything on that epic to-do list? Gurl, you’re killing it.

You will cry.
At your desk, in the toilets, to your boss in a meeting, maybe just a private tear shed at home. Work. Is. Tough.

Polite conversation rules:
Monday – Tuesday: How was your weekend?
Wednesday: Jesus, this week has felt long. / Weekend soon!
Thursday – Friday: What are your plans this weekend?
At all times: The temperature of the office.
REPEAT.

You will fantasise about throwing your keyboard at your bosses head.
Because your inner sass queen has to be unleashed some time, right?

You will become ever more creative with your excuses for being late.
I got sucked down the plughole when I was showering and had to climb my way out? That’s definitely why my hair still hasn’t dried.

You will have a work husband / wife.
The Tina Fey to your Amy Poehler, you’re the comedy Kings and Queens of the office.

You’ll find the best hiding places to text / watch tv / snapchat.
Because nobody has time for 110% concentration all day. Unless a potential new employer is reading this… If so, please erase this point from your memory.

At some point, there will be major work dramz.
From people getting fired, to redundancy to your start-up not getting funding. You’ll never be prepared and it’ll probably happen when you’re on holiday.

Meetings.
You’ll flip between loving that they’re a waste of an hour to loathing not being at your desk and actually being productive.

The pure joy of achieving something is beyond expectation.
And it’ll sound like no biggie to anyone you tell. (If they’re good friends, they’ll still pretend to be interested / impressed that your tweet went viral, you made a snazzy spreadsheet or that you tidied your desk.)

Endorsements on LinkedIn are somehow addictive.
And are also my new favourite joke. Good at snacking? Endorse me on LinkedIn or it doesn’t count, bbz.

You’ll fantasise about leaving, but the thought of applying for jobs is too much.

The salad days.
No matter how ready you feel you were to move on, you’ll always look back on the lolz, your work family and the perks with a rose-tinted shade of fondness. And then reality hits when you remember all those times you wanted to shut your head in the photocopier out of sheer rage.

It’s that time of year again where a large proportion of twenty-somethings emerge from their cave of a bedroom, having completed their dissertations and ready for the best summer EVER. With reminders round every corner that this time last year it was me; I’ve started to realise that I sound like a wise old woman preaching my pearls of wisdom to anybody about to face the ‘real world’. It only makes sense to jump back on the blogging bandwagon and pass on these pearls of wisdom I’ve learnt about facing the big bad real world. Or maybe just laugh at how ridiculous my life has been in the last year, I’m not sure which (most likely the latter).

SJW’s Pearls of Wisdom on Adulthood:
1. Prepare yourself now to mourn the loss of weekday nights out. You’ll maybe manage the occasional Thursday, but for real, whoever said that Thursday is the new Friday had obviously never had to experience the pain of staring at Excel with a hangover.

2. Sassy schoolgirl antics are just a dream; Office Politics are out to get ya.
The aim of the game? Don’t play it. 💁

3. Tax is the biggest b*tch you’ll ever meet.
Cry now for all the money you’ll never see. 👋

4. You will never EVER be prepared for the utterly horrendous moment that Student Loans send you a statement of everything you owe. With interest. The ugly big brother of your bank statement; nothing can be more horrific than the subtotal at the bottom of the first page being over 20 grand and knowing you have to turn over for more. 👻🙈🙈🙈

5. This one depends on what career you take. Anything vaguely creative? Penniless, living off pasta and poorer than your wildest dreams. But hey, your job sounds cool. (At least that’s what I keep telling myself). Anything else? Well I’m not sure I can actually imagine an entry level job with a starting salary above even a living wage (fashion is just so out there with thinking that people don’t actually need a wage, right?) but props to you all that did, for being widely sensible and actually listening when your parents said to get a job that pays well.

6. You’ll think this on the daily:

7. There is no greater joy on this planet than turning your alarm off on a Friday night.

8. It really freaks your parents out when you call them and talk about all the adult things you have achieved. I think my family are still in shock that I can be vaguely practical. Okay, maybe an overstatement, they’re probably just shocked I’m still alive.

9. You’ll be perpetually tired and perpetually busy at all times. Without question.
Meetings really bring this to reality; you’re sat there on one hand considering if you can shut your eyes without anyone noticing, but also silently screaming ‘Just make a decision, I am too busy for this!’
😱😱😱

10. Weekend inequality is the real issue we should all be campaigning for.
Who on earth decided that I should spend 5 days in the office and only two out having lolz with the squad? I can’t possibly have a lie in, go on an adventure, party and do all my life admin in 48 hours!?! SO. UNFAIR.

Aaand finally, the real gem: Nobody has their 💩 together. We can all try but really, Google is our saviour.

Who really knows what’s the best electricity tariff to be on. Who doesn’t cook themselves fish fingers and chips when they can’t be bothered to make a proper meal. Who really makes their bed every single day!? For real, who doesn’t trip up on a daily basis, spend most of their money for the month on a festival ticket, live off cereal to save money on lunch and whack their car’s wing mirror on a tree? Because I can definitely put my hands up and say, all of the above has happened to me… (And that’s just in the last month).

Here’s to being not a girl, but not yet a woman. 🍸

Over and out,
SJW x

P.s. Sorry Mum. I’ll try and cut down the phone calls asking for advice on my latest life crisis.

The big announcement: I’m now employed!! Still technically homeless, but we’ll discuss that one later…

The job offer was all a bit of a whirlwind; it took four days to go from unemployed to having that holy grail of a job offer. I found out I had an interview the day before it was supposed to happen and had to travel four hours to London that evening… I then stayed on my brother’s sofa for two nights and therefore woke up on my 21st birthday on a sofa and had to travel back home for 4 hours that day. It was all a bit too wild and glamourous for even me to handle. Since that last blog post I hope that those of you looking for jobs have also had some luck! And as if anyone needs proof that the job market is competitive, I recently found out that 180 people applied for my role… The mind boggles.

So how is it being a working lady? If I had to sum it up in one word: TIRING. SO FRIGGING TIRING. I’m starting to think that my only contribution to a conversation can be about how tired I am! I’m generally working 9ish hour days, sometimes longer. I get home, I eat, I talk about how tired I am, I sleep. Repeat.

If there’s one thing which I really wasn’t prepared for, it’s the lack of time to just do stuff for yourself. From everything to painting your nails, going shopping, to that dreaded life admin. I’m currently in the middle of sorting out moving house and I feel like I’m trying to work two jobs at once I have so much to sort out. So you may be wondering where I’m living at the moment and to be quite frank, I’m happily homeless. I’ve loved the awkward responses and confused faces when people at work have asked me that. So due to the rather rushed job offer, one of my friends, let’s call her The Big Bell, said I could stay in her room for a bit (y’know to keep me off the streets ). So we’ve been sharing her room (and bed) for basically a month now. It feels like we’re a married couple; we have sides of the bed, we wake each other up in the morning and sometimes have breakfast in bed, we put Cher on very loudly and dance around the room (probably shouldn’t admit that one). Luckily we’ve both been busy so she hasn’t realised she hates me just yet. Genuinely though, massive shout out to The Big Bell for letting me stay, I appreciate it so much. And if you try to tell me that your friends are better than mine, I’d just like to let you know that you’re wrong. The Big Bell is the one.

I guess you also might be wondering what I actually do. My job role is Marketing and Events at a fashion app. It’s still pretty new but has been backed by the same venture capitalists as ASOS and Nasty Gal, so yeah, pretty cool hey. My job is pretty varied, from helping organising events, to co-managing the social media to designing the marketing materials. See my #cheeese picture below from when I was all proud of the roller banners I’d designed…

It’s been an amazing opportunity so far and I’m excited to see what else it has in store for me. Next week I’ve got London Fashion Week to attend as I get to blog about it, so that’s pretty sweeeet.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re not really that interested in my life, so I’ll sign off now so you don’t all start snoozing.

I’ve been reading a lot of hilarious blog posts recently on the ‘twenty-something life crisis’ and it’s inspired me into blogging about it myself. I did the official graduation jazz a couple of weeks ago now, and I’m going to put in a picture of my dress because, quite frankly, I loved it. (It’s from H&M in case you wondered, mega-bargain of the century).

So that’s my posing over with, how’s the big dark doom of life after graduation? Well, it’s definitely a whole new rollercoaster adventure. I’m not going to lie, it’s tough out there. I’ve become a legit traveller woman, for the past 3 months I haven’t been in one place longer than a week and a half; I’ve become a pro at packing a suitcase at high speed, running for trains and sleeping where ever is possible. It’s hectic, but all that travelling is giving me time to plan how I’m going to conquer the world.

So here’s my list of all the signs of a Graduate life-crisis:

1. If one more person asks you what your plans are next, you’ll scream at them.

2. You’re so bored of writing cover letters that you just want to send ‘PLEASE EMPLOY ME, I’M AMAZING’ and hope it still gets you a job.

3. You’re amazed at how much competition there is for proper jobs. Like, where are all these people coming from? 600 applicants in 2 hours, is that even for real!?

4. You’ll be equally amazed at how many jobs there are in recruitment. Where are all the jobs these people are recruiting for? How is that actually a thing?

5. You become ridiculously savvy at knowing which job adverts are just covering up ‘sales’ (cold calling) jobs. I was never aware that cold-calling was marketing. And who even buys stuff from cold-callers these days!? Ridiculous.

6. You begin to contemplate ridiculous careers. Dog walker for the rest of my life? Yeah, I can do that. They won’t mind that I’m not an animal person, right?

7. The joy of getting good news feels better than you imagine getting married / having your first child will be.

8. Someone mentions taking a Masters and you think back to the dark, dissertation days and shudder. Never, ever am I going through that again.

9. Money: You have none. You have to go back to the teenage days of begging your parents for a tenner so you can live.

10. You dream of your first pay-check. You then see the average salaries and cry at how you’ll be a penniless tramp.

11. The whole ’employment status / occupation’ box on forms brings on a whole new crisis. You can’t quite bring yourself to write unemployed. That’s only a temporary thing, right? I was actually signing up to the doctors today and they asked me on the form; so I put my occupation as ‘Graduate’, like it’s an actual thing. I look for jobs and I write letters telling people how amazing I am and how I deserve a job, whilst crying at how bad the competition is. Definite legit career.

12. There will be a lot of ladytears shed. It’s a life crisis, you have to cry. Sometimes you aren’t sure why.

13. The pure confusion of, just, life. Where will I live? Do I or do I not apply for this job? Will I be able to afford to live? What skills do I have for this job? Will I ever get a job? How do people ever go to the bother of changing jobs once they have one? WHAT IS LIFE?!

14. As you apply for a job, you begin planning your whole life if you got it. It seems like bliss. Then, application done, dream over. Next application, next dream life.

15. Your parents suggest careers for you. You wonder if they ever even listened to what you did at uni. Do you not understand my dreams!? Am I adopted? Who even are you!?

16. Moving back in with your parents. Actually I think this needs a whole blog post to itself.

17. Those over-wordy job descriptions are just hell in themselves.

18. The hatred you develop for the generic ‘Due to the large amount of applications, if you’re unsuccessful, we will not be able to let you know’. You may have put your heart and soul into that application, but nah, soz, bit busy to let you know you haven’t got it.

19. The jobs that ask for ‘Recent graduates with at least [what seems like 10 years] experience’. I was at university, how did you expect me to work full time too!? I’m not silly, I have a decent amount of experience, but equally, it sometimes feels like jobs want you to have experienced enough to be qualified for a managerial role yet it’s still entry level. Bizarre.

20. The wonder of if you’re the only one going through this. Then you look at the ridiculous numbers of applicants and laugh to yourself that you could not possibly be joined by more people, attached to their laptops, scrolling pages of potential jobs and despairing. That’s the reality of your problem.

21. The hatred for the words ‘job’ and ‘application’.

So basically, the graduate life consists of a lot of confusion, realisations of how poor you’ll be, how competitive the world is and how you need to escape moving back home. If you’re in this situation then I guess the crux of the crisis is that it will all work out. If you’re determined enough, you can make your own path and trot on down it like the superstar you are (girlpower inspiration at it’s best there). So keep your head up and enjoy having the time to catch up on all those things you missed whilst writing dissertation. The despair is real… But keep doing your thaaang.